Alex Saunders

Alex Saunders is a PhD student in the School of Geography, Development and Environment and is a member of the Social Pixel Lab led by Dr. Beth Tellman. In his research, Alex seeks to answer questions around disaster risk management and risk financing for extreme climate events. His work combines remote sensing, machine learning and statistical methods to enhance our understanding of agricultural weather risks in settings spanning rural Bangladesh to the US Midwest. Alex’s motivation stems from his time spent working in the humanitarian and reinsurance sectors where he evaluated risk financing programs protecting vulnerable communities across Asia and Africa, and helped to establish the first index-based earthquake reinsurance contract for the Government of Morocco. Alex completed his undergraduate and masters degrees in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Leeds in the UK.